


We Are Fire

by tiredguitarist



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Also fluff, Angst, M/M, Stucky - Freeform, annoyingly poetic, stevebucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 14:39:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9329486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredguitarist/pseuds/tiredguitarist
Summary: "I can't trust my own mind..."After the events of Civil War, Bucky moves into the compound. Angst ensues.





	

**Author's Note:**

> TW: abuse/violence, slurs. 
> 
> This is for everybody waiting for the next chapter of Pretty, and for my english teacher who said my writing is too literal :)))

Needless to say, everybody’s a little weary about the ex-assassin who was trying to kill them a couple months ago. But when Bucky is given a room on the top floor, all by himself, he feels a spark of anxiety that he hasn’t experienced in about seventy years. He demands for a room farther away from everybody.

He insisted on it, and he wouldn’t stop insisting on it, yelling, arguing, and pushing until Stark cleaned out a room in the basement and threw a bed and bathroom in there. Nobody really knew why the compound had a basement, or what the hell was kept in it. 

Clint predicted dead Hydra agents. Natasha put her money on a wine cellar. Sam said rats. 

Of course there was a camera in there, and of course Stark installed the feed onto Steve’s desktop, because boyfriends need to watch boyfriends and pipe it, Tony. It’s not funny. Don’t play with him like that.

But Bucky’s not doing it because he’s afraid that Howard’s son, Redhead, Spider Boy, and Alley Cat would all turn on him one night and kill him in his sleep. (Also, he really needed to start learning names. He can only come up with so many nicknames.)

He’s isolating himself because he’s scared that he’ll turn. He can’t trust his own mind, but he’d never admit that. Not even to Steve. Steve, who has been so sweet and understanding. Steve, who wasted no time falling back into the role of the scrappy Brooklyn kid with a big mouth and an even bigger heart. Steve, who is the only person Bucky can trust enough to touch him. (He almost broke Peter’s hand when he tried to touch his metal arm.)

So the first night alone in his new room goes fine. And so does the second, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth and Bucky thinks he can rack it up as a clean and easy week, but on the sixth night, it happens.

The first nightmare takes the form of his savior.

Steve. 

He thinks he’s awake, so he tries to get up to start getting ready, but a pair of strong, warm arms pull him back down. He settles into Steve’s chest, relishing in the solidarity of him. Of course it was a shock when he started remembering, and the Steve he was remembering was a lot skinnier than the Steve who was asking him about their shared home in Brooklyn. But he almost likes Steve better now, but only because his anchor to the world was now heavier and sturdier.

He’s so caught up in thoughts of Steve, he almost doesn’t notice the fist around his throat. But then he does, and he’s panicky and crying because he’s always been and always will be stronger than Steve, but his hand won’t remove itself from around Bucky’s windpipe. And then Steve is whispering horrible things to him, and he’s crying even harder now, which is quickly depleting his ever shrinking oxygen supply. 

Really, though, Bucky has his own metal arm wrapped around his neck and is thrashing and screaming (or at least trying to) in his bed. 

It takes Steve and Tony five minutes to wake up from the noise. 

It takes a combined ten minutes for Tony to run to his lab to grab a piece of his armor and a scary looking syringe that I know Bucky won’t like, the blond thinks as they collide in the hallway. 

It takes thirty minutes (too damn long, in Steve’s opinion) for Tony to wrestle Bucky’s arm from his throat and stab him with a sedative that promises a dreamless sleep. But not before he chokes out a “Steve,” which neither of them miss. Much to Tony’s dismay.

It takes fifteen minutes of Tony trying to pull Steve away from his position of cupping Bucky’s face with their foreheads pressed together, coaxing himself out of a panic attack. 

It takes two hours for them to fall back asleep, both scared of nightmares that might come. That do come. That had already been coming and would continue to come for so long.

***  
Turns out, all of Bucky’s nightmares take some form of Steve. Steve hurting him, Steve getting hurt, Steve dying, Steve, Steve, Steve. Despite everything, this only makes Bucky wants to curl into Steve, forever, even more.

By his tenth nightmare, (yes he counted, ten) Steve has wrangled Bucky and Stark in an office and is trying to keep his calm while he requests that he and Bucky share a room. Bucky tenses up and his eyes widen in alarm. He really doesn’t want to bother him with his nightmares. 

More specifically, he really doesn’t want Steve to know that all his nightmares revolve around him. 

So, he punches Steve in the arm, calls him a big lug, and says he can take care of himself, has been for a long time, punk.

His twelfth nightmare is a little different. Peggy stands across from him in the darkness of a dirty bar. She smiles at him, too tight and sharklike, too cracked. Steve walks up to him and plops himself down. Peggy vanishes.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy in my life, Buck,” Steve says wistfully.

“Not even when we were scraping by in Brooklyn?” Bucky jokes, nudging his friend’s shoulder. Steve doesn’t get it.  
“Even back then, when we were just. . . . stupid, and reckless and getting silly drunk, I don’t think I was ever really happy. There were so many things just looming, you know?” Steve says.

Bucky’s angry. He has every right to be. He was giving his all back then. He still is. He always will, for Steve.

“Wow, glad I spent half of my life with you just to have you blow me off for a broad,” Bucky huffs. He shouldn’t call Carter a broad. Now he’s angry at himself. 

“Really, Buck? You can’t just be happy for me?”

“You know when I will be happy for you? When you finally learn to dance. When you’re able to sleep without socks on. When you stop pulling your punches when we train together. I’ll be happy when get it through your thick skull that I love you! And I always have, you fucking idiot!” Bucky screams.

Steve grabs Bucky by his lapels and pushes him against the wall. Bucky gulps.

“You can’t go saying that kinda stuff here, alright? I could have you disbanded, I could have you killed. I’m not- I’m not like you, okay? I’m not a fag,” Steve snarls.

Bucky nods, close to tears. Steve pushes away from him.

“How about you keep away from me, okay? I’ll request a different bunk. Sound good? Bucky?”

Bucky can’t move.

“Bucky, can you hear me?”

He can’t speak.

“Bucky!”

“Bucky!”

Bucky shoots up from his bed, sweaty and scared. Steve is right above him, panic carved into his features. Steve draws Bucky in for a hug, but the brunet pushes him away. Steve gives him a puzzled look.

“Steve?” Bucky asks, too soft and scared. Steve almost flinches.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think I’m a freak?” 

“Of course not, Buck. Why would I-”

Bucky surges forward and catches Steve’s mouth with his own. It’s gentle, not the way Steve would see Bucky kissing girls, coming up for air with red lipstick around his mouth and a twinkle in his eye. But Bucky’s not quite what he used to be, and neither is Steve, and there’s not a lot they can do about that. 

Bucky pulls back. He’s terrified.

“I can give you a couple reasons why, Rogers,” Bucky huffs.

“Don’t go running away on me now, Barnes. You may be an idiot, you may be too handsome for your own good, but you are no freak,” Steve whispers.

Bucky feels it deep in his bones, a yearning, a want. Steve feels the same in his heart. So they hold each other, intertwining into eternity. Then, somehow, the sun is coming up and Bucky is putty under Steve’s gaze, he is broken glass in his arms. But Steve doesn’t mind the cuts, because Bucky is beautiful in the early sun. Steve doesn’t mind, because he’d do anything for Bucky.

Walk to Austria, crash a plane.

Die.

It hits Steve like a truck. 

Because Steve Rogers is a reckless bisexual who has only truly loved three people in his entire life. But he’s been reckless since age four, when he wanted to impress that boy with the pretty eyes on the playground. He’s been reckless since age sixteen when he gave Sally from around he corner fifty cents to not tell anybody that he had moaned Bucky while they were necking. He’s been reckless since he could remember, but it’s always for him.

His pal, his buddy, his Bucky.

Because Steve Rogers would run through fire for that dumb kid from Brooklyn.

It hits him once more. He’s in love with Bucky Barnes. He is recklessly, stupidly in love with Bucky Barnes. And it’s probably killed a lot of people. It almost killed the two of them. But Steve is head-over-heels for this boy, so it doesn’t really matter.

It’s like War loving Peace.

It’s like Death loving Life.

It’s like the Moon loving the Sun.

It’s horrifically beautiful, but neither of them care. They are a fire that refuses to be extinguished. They are Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, holding each other in the light of the morning, after seventy years of want and need. They are them. And they will not be stopped.


End file.
